No external evaluation of schools this academic session

Citing busy schedule during and after the state Assembly polls in 2012,officials have failed to conduct independent evaluation of students,teachers and schools for the ongoing academic session (2012-13) as stipulated in Gunotsav,an annual exercise introduced by the state government in 2009 to assess performance of government primary schools in the state.

Citing busy schedule during and after the state Assembly polls in 2012,officials have failed to conduct independent evaluation of students,teachers and schools for the ongoing academic session (2012-13) as stipulated in Gunotsav,an annual exercise introduced by the state government in 2009 to assess performance of government primary schools in the state.

Manoj Aggarwal,the director of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) which is the nodal agency for Gunotsav,said,The external evaluation exercise,spanning over three days,is carried out in September-October. As state Assembly elections were scheduled around that period,it could not be implemented for this academic session.

Also,external evaluation may not be necessary every year. We will conduct it for the coming academic session of 2013-14 that will commence in June, he said.

External evaluation is carried out by senior state officials.

There are 91 lakh students enrolled in 33,700 government primary schools. More than 6,000 grant-in-aid primary schools have also been included in Gunotsav this year.

Even the internal evaluation has been delayed by nearly a year.

Normally,the internal evaluation is conducted by schools in June and the results are compared with external evaluation conducted after a period of three months. The results are released at the end of the academic session.

This year,an internal evaluation was carried out in these schools on April 12,after a delay of nearly 10 months. The results are expected to be released within 40 days.

In the test designed by Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training (GCERT),students had to attempt 80 objective questions in 100 minutes.

Changes in Gunotsav

n Nearly 30 lakh students of more than 6,000 grant-in-aid schools also covered